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Kenyon Zimmer’s Immigrants Against the State provides an illuminating look into militant working class communities of immigrants in the United States but ultimately fails when it it comes to providing an explanatory narrative for their demise.

Kenyon Zimmer’s Immigrants Against the State (2015) came out at the tail-end of a surge in radicalism during which many young people found anarchist ideas of increasing relevance (or frustration). Anarchism continues to fascinate radicalized youth and Zimmer’s book does much to show that the ideology had a significant historic existence in the United States. He demonstrates that anarchist ideals were deeply embedded in certain militant working class communities, communities often dominated by immigrants with a specifically ethnic character.

Zimmer’s book was also published relatively recently, during a continuing hysteria over immigration (a key fixture in the national dialogue). Fear of “radicalized” refugees from the Middle East bringing terrorism to the country is consistently used by righitist to drum up xenophobia and immigrants are also used as a scapegoat for economic difficulties. One of the key arguments in Immigrants Against the State is that immigrants didn’t bring “radicalism” to the USA, but rather developed a fidelity to radical ideologies such as anarchism in response to the conditions of exploitation, ethnic oppression and social alienation they experienced as industrial workers. Nor was left-wing radicalization the “natural” and inevitable response of immigrants to these conditions; as Zimmer points out many Italian Immigrants chose to embrace fascism as a way to affirm white citizenship as opposed to a militant rejection of state and capital while many Jewish immigrants turned to Zionism. Many immigrants came to the United States expecting a democratic “city on a hill” often found the opposite of democracy in the part that dominated their life, work. Some would pursue integration, which in many cases meant joining the middle class and seeking to influence state structures for civil rights. Conservative and religious community leaders were just as much a part of working class immigrant communities as were militant anarchists and socialists. Zimmer correctly points out there was no “straight line” between immigration and radicalization, but a variety of factors at play, bringing nuance to the broader topic of immigration.

The book itself is structured around an exploration of three key strongholds of anarchism in the United States: the Yiddish speaking Jewish anarchists communities in NYC, particularly the Lower East Side, the Italian-American community of anarchists in Paterson New Jersey, and the multi-ethnic but smaller groupings in San Francisco. After dissecting each community in a chapter, Zimmer looks at the trans-national character of anarchism during the period and breaks down how connections formed through immigration and familial networks created possibilities for internationalist collaboration. One example raised is the collaboration of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) with Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) in an attempted insurrection in Baja California, ultimately an unsuccessful putsch though somewhat admirable for its internationalist zeal. From here the book paints a picture of anarchism in decline, incapable of sustaining itself as a movement in face of authoritarian Soviet Communism and liberal capitalism. The overall timespan covered is from the late 19th century to around 1945.

The first half of the book is undoubtably the strongest. Zimmer’s exploration of these working class communities in a country where socialism supposedly “never happened” (according to the likes of Werner Sombart) gives the reader an insightful gaze into what militant working class communities dedicated to anarchist ideals looked like in the US during the first half of the 20th century. He also explores the roles that ethnic solidarities played in these communities, most specifically in Paterson and the Lower East Side. Zimmer points out that the kind of ethnic balkanization that marked the US anarchist (and broader labor movement) movement was not a matter of choice, but was imposed by the conditions workers found themselves in. In a situation where immigrant workers lived in close quarters (typically to be walking distance from their jobs) and spoke the same language while suffering discrimination in a xenophobic society, immigrant workers would develop a dual form of solidarity – one ethnic and one based on class.

This is exemplified by the entire culture of Yiddish speaking Jewish anarchists, a culture partially constructed by intelligentsia immigrant radicals who in the homeland saw Yiddish as primitive peasant talk. Yet to reach out to workers in Jewish communities one had to know Yiddish, causing these radial intelligentsia to embrace Yiddish in response and publish newspaper in that language. Yiddish anarchists were also bonded by a common experience of diaspora from pogroms in Eastern Europe, further creating a form of ethnic solidarity that went beyond a common language.

Yiddish Anarchist newspaper Freie Arbeiter Stimme

Zimmer is also quick to point out that anarchist ideology was one which espoused a world without borders held together by a cosmopolitan brotherhood of man. Yet this ideal was not counter to ethnic and even national forms of solidarity and communalism for all anarchists, as Bakunin’s writings distinguish between a nation which is a natural collectivity of “a people”, and the state which is a centralized institution imposed on “a people” to form a false collectivity. Zimmer is fairly uncritical of Bakunin’s views regarding nationalism which in many ways aim to reconcile anti-statism and nationalism by positing an “organic nation” against an “inorganic state”. He quotes Bakunin in the introduction saying “the spontaneous and free union of the living forces of a nation has nothing in common with their artificial concentration at once mechanistic and forced in the political centralization of the unitary state.” This reveals that Bakunin’s fondness for decentralization and federalism can largely be seen as a way to leave a door open for nationalism within his ideal future society. Further, Bakunin prefigures reactionary integralist nationalism by positing a transhistoric “people” that exist beyond the institutional state. Lacking a critique of Bakunin’s weaknesses regarding nationalism is a major blindspot, as one of the major weaknesses of the workers movement in the 20th Century was a strategy of taking the path of least resistance with regards to nationalism. Anarchist ideology, as much as it proclaimed cosmopolitan and internationalist ideals, did not fully preclude that solidarities produced by national or ethnic ties were inherently in conflict to their vision.

The contradictory nature of this vision comes out clearly in the parts of Zimmer’s book that discuss “anarcho-zionism” and the desires of some Jewish anarchists to combine nationalism with their vision of anarchism. While Yiddish speaking Jewish anarchists had developed whole subcultures around mocking Jewish religious practices they were still victims of Anti-Semitism, making an embrace of Jewish nationalism tempting for some. One Jewish anarchist who embraced nationalism was Hillel Solotaroff, who devised an ideology of “territorialism” while proclaiming that the purist internationalism that many Jewish anarchists embraced would lead to the destruction of their people (see pages 38-40 of Zimmers book for details of Solotaroff and territorialism). Territorialism was not understood by Solotaroff as a state-building ideology but rather a “federation of self-administered communes”. This was coupled with writings that endorsed outright chauvinism against Palestinians with claims that the presence of Jewish settlers would lead to the “primitive” society of Palestine benefitting from Jewish settlement and their “superior” culture. While still proclaiming adherence to anti-statism and internationalism, Solotaroff was heavily criticized by fellow Jewish anarchists, one of whom posed the question of whether he was a “nationalistic anarchist or anarchistic nationalist” in the Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime. While only winning over a small following before his death in 1921, Solotaroff would foreshadow the shift towards Zionism that Jewish anarchists increasingly made after the Holocaust.

Of exceptional interest in this book is Zimmer’s chapter on Paterson, which was a heavily Italian-American proletarian community of silk workers where anarchist ideals became a way of life during the early 20th century. Zimmer notes that in Biella, a community which many of these workers came from, it was common to own a small plot to help sustain subsistence. In Paterson no such option was possible and Italian-American immigrants (many of whom without citizenship) had no stake in the political machine. Anarchism, especially in syndicalist variants, was a sensible alternative to electoral or partyist socialism offered by the Socialist Party USA or Socialist Labor Party. Syndicalism’s emphasis on workers self-management also harkened back to a sense of control over the labor process that was lost through the processes of proletarianization and immigration. This meant the IWW would have a strong organizational presence and would be instrumental in mobilizing workers during the tumultuous wave of garment and textile strikes that would take hold from 1909 -1913. Beyond the mere organizational presence of the IWW was a presence of an anarchist culture that thrived on translational networks with other militants where anarchism became a way of life. The chapter on Paterson demonstrates that mass strikes don’t appear out of nowhere. For workers to see themselves as part of a class and strike in solidarity they have to be socialized in such a way as to do so. The presence of a strong culture of working class collectivity manifested through organization building in Paterson and the militancy of the cities strike wave was no coincidence.

IWW leader Bill Haywood and his squad in the streets of Paterson during the mass strike of 1913, a 6 month strike that ended in failure.

Not all anarchists in Paterson accepted organization building, with a trend of anti-organizational anarchists also existing in Paterson. The anti-organizationalists, while proclaiming the end goal of a federalist anarcho-communist society, argued that mass scale organization was inherently oppressive and that direct action by small groups (including but not limited to assassinations and bombings) would incite a spontaneous uprising of the masses that would abolish the state and capitalism immediately and inevitably spread worldwide. These political splits mirror those within the Marxist left as well, with the anti-organizationalist trends preceding the “councilist” tendency of ultra-left Marxism that places the spontaneous actions of workers at the point of production as the only authentic manifestation of legitimate working class organizations. By relying on a religious-like faith in spontaneity and hostility to organization both tendencies found similar fates of having little political importance, existing mostly as historical curiosities.

This brings to fore one of the main questions of revolutionary politics: how can organizations build up an existence within capitalism and gain influence without capitulating to the pressures of capitalist society and losing their revolutionary potential? Anarchists saw organization as either being the solution to this problem or the enemy itself. The anti-organizationalists put all their faith in the spontaneous action of the masses which would be sparked by the actions of the clandestine anarchist elite. On the other hand, the organizationalists tended toward syndicalism and believed that by only organizing unions they could keep “pure” by circumventing the political process and attract workers through their ability to win bread-and-butter demands, building up organizational strength to the point where a general strike could be called to shut down the city and transfer industry into the hands of the workers. Yet this strategy would also rely on a faith in mass spontaneity, as it is assumed and that the power vacuum created by a general strike would simply be left alone with an anarchist society freely arising in its wake. This ignores the political (as well as technical) complexities that come with organizing society in a revolutionary period, circumventing political power rather than grappling with its realities. How will people be won to an anti-capitalist programme for change? How will petty bourgeois specialists and civil servants whose needs are key to running society to be dealt with? Neither the organizationalists nor anti-organizationalists would be able to address, nonetheless answer, key political or practical questions and instead left their solution up to a faith spontaneity and the inherent goodness of mankind.

Zimmer’s politics certainly show in this work, which is in itself not a bad thing. Political partisanship is never reason itself to dismiss the value of a work. The fact that Zimmer has a strong affinity to anarchist ideology means his research is inspired to a certain extent by political passion and not entirely cynical careerism. Passion is no substitute for rigor however. Yet when it comes to constructing a narrative of the decline of anarchism in the US (and worldwide) Zimmer’s political leanings act as a blindspot. This is most apparent in the last chapter and conclusion of Immigrants Against the State, where Zimmer looks at the decline of US anarchism and its international counter-parts. However when it comes to producing a narratives that explains this decline Zimmer continues a flawed explanation that continues to haunt anarchist historians.

In Immigrants Against the State the blame for anarchism’s decline in the USA is ultimately put on Bolshevism and Stalinism (with little distinguish of course), whose rise to prominence meant one was stuck in a world where you either were in support of US imperialism or the USSR. Anarchists, victims of multiple betrayals from the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Stalinists in Spain, were therefore tragic victims of authoritarian forces which prevented the flourishing of anarchist libertarianism. This doesn’t mean Zimmer puts all the blame on anarchism’s Marxist rivals. Concerning the US Zimmer begins with the domestic repression of radicals in the period following the US’ entrance into WWI, the rise of Bolshevism and its factor in dividing the anarchist movement. The effects of domestic repression are not to be ignored; acts like the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1918 banned anarchist immigrants and allowed naturalized radicals to be stripped of citizenship and then deported. In 1920 the Palmer Raids crippled the IWW and a budding Communist Party already torn apart by factional struggle. Zimmer is also willing to portray the Bolshevik Revolution as an energizing force in the United States, creating a vision of “soviet power” that many workers aimed (and attempted) to create. Yet the influence of Bolshevism on anarchism in the US is portrayed mostly as a negative one that divided the anarchist movement and sapped it of its energy.

Beyond the United States, anarchists were repressed in the USSR (though some still held office until Stalinist purges in the 1930s) and the CNT-FAI’s potential for leading a revolution in alliance with dissident Marxists was strangled by Stalinist repression and fascist defeat. Anarchist internationalism was in ruins at this point, ultimately having lost out to Stalinism and Liberalism as a dominating world ideologies post-WWII. Wherever anarchists had movements that threatened the prevailing authorities they certainly faced repression from the state, but this is to be expected. Repression alone cannot explain why movements fail.

No sane Marxist would argue that the failure of the USSR was due solely to external pressures from US imperialism and that the state had no internal flaws of its own that played a role in its demise. Yet Zimmer’s history of anarchism presents a narrative where anarchism has no internal flaws, only external failings due to the tragedies of state repression. This is a consistent theme in anarchist literature, echoed in the works like Sam Dolgoff’s The Anarchist Collectives or Ian Mackay’s collaborative Anarchist FAQ document. Rather than trying to understand the internal problems and flaws that may have led to the decline of anarchism, Zimmer places all of the blame on external authoritarians. This is of course reflected in Zimmer’s own ideology as a committed anarchist; if humans are simply left free of the state then they will be naturally inclined to act with good will and cooperate with “mutual aid”.

Marxists do not deny that human nature exists, but also understand that human nature is something that is historically constructed through an ensemble of social relations that develop historically, often through conflict. Anarchist ideology generally fails to see this and instead envisions an eternal instinct to freedom. Yes, the human is corrupted by institutions, but once such institutions are swept away humanity will return to a “natural state” of freedom says the anarchist. Yet Marxists realize that social relations must be transformed for human nature to be transformed, which means grasping with political, strategic and transitional questions.

Zimmer’s work shows the most positive aspects of historical anarchism: its ties to working class communities and its ability to fuel militant actions against capital and the state. His work is also a good starting place for those interested in immigrant anarchism in the United States as well as labor militancy in general. While anarchist history as a rule of thumb is far more interesting than anarchist theory, those unfamiliar with the theories behind anarchism and how they connect to practice will learn something from reading this book.

Where Immigrants Against the State falls short is explaining why the historical movement of anarchism has faded away, a question of importance to anyone who is a political partisan. If one accepts that external repression isn’t a sufficient answer on its own, then Zimmer fails to really add anything new when it comes to answering critical questions and instead simply paints a vibrant picture of a world long gone, where anarchists are tragic heroes in a corrupt world set against them. Its a history of “bad guys who are authoritarian” vs. “good guys who believe in freedom”, ideological but not critical. It aims to ignore rather than grapple with questions like political decision-making, authority, and developing mass constituency. This isn’t to say Zimmer is blind to any of the unsavory aspects of anarchism, with this critique of their backwards gender views regarding the “virile syndicalism” of the IWW as well as his willingness to discuss the connections between anarchism and Zionism. Yet like so much anarchist writing, Zimmer’s book sets out to prove that anarchism is more than bomb throwers and rebellious denials of authority. In doing so, it is more of the same in a long line of attempts to prove that anarchism is relevant- not the kind of serious attempt to explain and understand anarchism as a historical phenomena that we need.

Bernie Sanders’ attempts to appeal to the legacy of a true class militant like Eugene Debs are laughable and pathetic, writes Anton Johannsen.

Jeb? DEBS!

I’m an anarchist. I’m a communist, too. Don’t worry. I’ve read my Marx, and I keep the faith. I know the differences between a socialist, an anarchist and a communist, or the supposed ones anyhow. I know that Albert Parsons felt he had exhausted Chicago’s corrupt and ensnaring local system of political governance, and this drove him toward political anarchism. I know that nothing short of revolution can deal with the antagonisms inherent in capitalism. This and many other historical lessons have made me very skeptical of electoralism.

But I always said I would vote for Eugene V. Debs. A founding member of both the IWW, and the Socialist Party of America, Debs was born in Indiana in 1854. He got work in younger years in rail car painting, and as he began a local political life in the Democratic party, also became a member of the existing Railway unions.

By the 1890’s he helped form one of the first examples of industrial unionism, the American Railway Union. Shortly thereafter, he took up leadership of the Pullman Strike, and was arrested on charges of interfering with the U.S. Post (as the railcars produced by Pullman were meant to carry mail).

While in jail for this for 6 months, Debs read Kautsky, Marx, and other socialist authors and became enamored with the ideas.

“…I began to read and think and dissect the anatomy of the system in which workingmen, however organized, could be shattered and battered and splintered at a single stroke. The writings of Bellamy and Blatchford early appealed to me. The Cooperative Commonwealth of Gronlund also impressed me, but the writings of Kautsky were so clear and conclusive that I readily grasped, not merely his argument, but also caught the spirit of his socialist utterance – and I thank him and all who helped me out of darkness into light.”

By 1897 he began to openly advocate for socialism, and work to develop a socialist party.

Pullman Railway Workers Confront Illinois National Guard

The Debs of this period actually quite embodied the conservative, anti-immigrant politics of the Democratic party of the time. He regarded immigration as a burden on the American worker, who would be in competition with low-wage workers. However, as Debs himself latter reflected that during the Pullman Strike he was “…baptized in socialism in the roar of conflict.” Before reading Marx, the ARU and Debs were faced with uniting Railway workers who had been historically divided by craft unions that had no qualms scabbing on each-other. This practical task is that to which Deb refers, along with the brutal putting down of the strike by the National Guard, Federal Troops, and Grover Cleveland, the Democratic President. As a result of these experiences Debs would move away from his anti-immigrant, pro-Democratic Party stance.

Further, Debs’ development makes the cynical, ignorant, self-interested ideology of Bernie Sanders and his “socialist” advocates so strikingly clear. Unlike Sanders’ xenophobic line on immigration, or trade with China, torn straight from the failed ideology of AFL-CIO bureaucrats, Debs refused to support any proposal to limit immigration while running for President:

“Having just read the majority report of the Committee on Immigration. It is utterly unsocialistic, reactionary and in truth outrageous, and I hope you will oppose with all your power. The plea that certain races are to be excluded because of tactical expediency would be entirely consistent in a bourgeois convention of self-seekers, but should have no place in a proletariat gathering under the auspices of an international movement that is calling on the oppressed and exploited workers of all the world to unite for their emancipation. . . .

Let those desert us who will because we refuse to shut the international door in the faces of their own brethren; we will be none the weaker but all the stronger for their going, for they evidently have no clear conception of the international solidarity, are wholly lacking in the revolutionary spirit, and have no proper place in the Socialist movement while they entertain such aristocratic notions of their own assumed superiority.

Let us stand squarely on our revolutionary, working class principles and make our fight openly and uncompromisingly against all our enemies, adopting no cowardly tactics and holding out no false hopes, and our movement will then inspire the faith, arouse the spirit, and develop the fibre that will prevail against the world.”

Later, in 1916, the SPA’s central committee drafted the National Program to accompany Debs run for President. Instead of the usual party convention used to draft a program, the SPA decided to save funds and have it drafted by the more conservative executive committee, and then put it to referendum. Debs suggestions embody clearly three principles from which so many “socialists” have strayed far from these days:

“First: The class struggle should be more clearly and specifically stated and more emphatically declared…Second: The platform should declare in positive and unequivocal terms in favor of revolutionary economic organization, and state the reason for it. (Here is referring to, for example, the IWW)…Third: I am opposed with every drop in my veins to the two declarations in favor of war. If these are permitted to stand the party might as well declare openly in favor of militarism…”

The second two reasons are the most important for us today. Since the failure of the Bolshevik revolution, most “socialists” have been bouncing around the globe trying to support third-world bonapartist dictators and nationalist uprising. Aside from integrating emerging capitalist countries into the foreign policy designs of the USSR, this terrible digression demoralized the world working class, and at every turn impeded a basic socialist principle: Capitalism is served in it’s inevitable and intermittent crises by recourse to bloody, destructive and terrifying war; civil war, guerilla war, imperialist competition, coup d’etats. If the working class is to be anything like an organized force to combat capital, it must abandon it’s mythological national heritages, and stand for the world.

I would vote Debs because he was relentless in his critique of the corrupt, reformist, craft-oriented AFL. The second argument, that socialists ought to support not reformist, bureaucratic unions, but fighting, ideologically socialist, or class unions is certainly one of the most unpopular ideas of today. There is no shortage of preening, “secret” communists who “go where the workers are”, those 7-8% that still are in “unions” to pursue William Fosters grand strategy of “boring from within” (and it sure is BORING!). This isn’t to say workers in those places ought not to fight tooth and nail to put communist revolution on the agenda. Indeed it is to say they must do so purely on an understanding that capitalism cannot dispense with class struggle, that the only hope for humanity is that workers dispense with capitalism, by winning the class war!

Cheap, dime-a-dozen politicians trying to reinvigorate the base of a war-mongering, dyed-in-the-wool capitalist racket like the Democratic Party might occasionally appeal to some vague notion of Debs. Debs himself, however, was unequivocal, uncompromising, and a true working class leader.

A final example: Debs spent the years leading up to US involvement in WWI railing against “preparedness” as promulgated by militarists and industrialists. When the war came, Debs continued to condemn it. Doing what any real socialist ought to, he encouraged draft dodging and resistance on the part of working people everywhere. For this, he was charged with sedition, and sentenced to 10 years in prison as well as being “disenfranchised for life.” Debs spoke in his defense during the trial:

“Your honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means….

I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and factories; I am thinking of the women who, for a paltry wage, are compelled to work out their lives; of the little children who, in this system, are robbed of their childhood, and in their early, tender years, are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon, and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the machines while they themselves are being starved body and soul….

Your honor, I ask no mercy, I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never more fully comprehended than now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom. I can see the dawn of a better day of humanity. The people are awakening. In due course of time they will come into their own. When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the Southern Cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches the Southern Cross begins to bend, and the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of Time upon the dial of the universe; and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the look-out knows that the midnight is passing– that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.”

While in prison, Eugene Debs ran for President another time. He was not a scheming politician. He was not lapdog to the Democrats and their moneyed-masters. He was a socialist, committed indefatigably to the millions of workers of the world, not only in the U.S., but everywhere because a socialist has no country.

True, Debs like many socialist of the period had a tendency to paper over deep and long running racial tensions that fractured U.S. society. Then again at times he could be exceedingly lucid:

“As a social party we receive the Negro and all other races upon absolutely equal terms. We are the party of the working class, the whole working class, and we will not suffer ourselves to be divided by any specious appeal to race prejudice; and if we should be coaxed or driven from the straight road we will be lost in the wilderness and ought to perish there, for we shall no longer be a Socialist party….

There never was any social inferiority that was not the shrivelled fruit of economic inequality. The Negro, given economic freedom, will not ask the white man any social favors; and the burning question of “social equality” will disappear like mist before the sunrise.

I have said and say again that, properly speaking, there is no Negro question outside of the labor question—the working class struggle. Our position as Socialists and as a party is perfectly plain. We have simply to say: “The class struggle is colorless.” The capitalists, white, black and other shades, are on one side and the workers, white, black and all other colors, on the other side….”

What seems like a genuine thrust for equality, was likely hamstrung by taking races as given, instead of seeing racism as the social process by which racist relations are “objectified” in race. It is certainly true that there is no intrinsic difference between people of different races, but there are pernicious and complex social relations which often take cover in the guise of flesh. Neverless it seems to me that Debs, in many of his principles, has plenty to offer socialists of today.

If you want a career politician like Bernie Sanders to “broker” a better deal for “American Workers” with the capitalist class, at the expense of struggling workers in Mexico, Korea, China, etc. then go for it. And in 4 years or so all the pensions and benefits, paltry as they are, that are granted to you for shirking your own class, will be wiped out by another capitalist crisis. Trumka, Sanders, Clinton, will all come back around to pander to you and tell you how hard they’re working to harmonize the interests of labor and capital yet again.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for the next Debs.

“I am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of the plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.” – Eugene V. Debs